Monday, April 9, 2012

Lunch Gone Bad

The girls (mom, sis, friend Ria) and I were in Ilocos over the weekend. Mom's friends at work booked a roadtrip because this has been the longest span of time without work for them (no office since Thursday 'til now, Monday) so they really planned to do this weekend getaway.

Day two of our trip (Saturday) - we visited the Kabigan Falls, Patapat Viaduct, and Paraiso ni Anton... going to Blue Lagoon, we were told that we could opt to buy fresh seafood at a roadside market and take it to Blue Lagoon, where we would find a restaurant to cook the seafood to our liking. They didn't like the idea and thinking there were restaurants along the lagoon where we could buy cooked food, we headed to Blue Lagoon hoping to have a sumptuous lunch.

We were wrong. So many people, too much heat... to the point that I found Blue Lagoon not as pretty as I hoped it would be. I guess seeing too much people, too much vehicles and bearing a very scorching summer heat caused for me to lose interest in the place - especially that it was difficult to find a place to eat at... one resort's restaurant served buffet lunch at p500 per person, but their food were so unappetizing - just three dishes all looked like something we could eat at a roadside eatery. At p500 I could have a great buffet lunch at Tong Yang where I could eat all the expensive fish I want, so we didn't grab it.

Right next to the resort was a place called Jhun's Eatery. Seeing an empty table, we decided to just have lunch there, afterall, they have two dishes to choose from.

The dishes were sort of expensive at p100 pesos per serving, but we were so hungry, we just grabbed the chance. We encountered a bad experience while placing our order. One man approached the counter and started complaining about a bad service - their group asked the eatery's staff about reserving a table and the staff told them their food will be ready by 12nn (they made reservation around 10am as they said). They came a little past 12nn, and while the dishes were ready, rice wasn't. We all know how important rice is to us Filipinos, so it made them upset, since it was two hours ago when they made the reservation. The eatery's staff answered all their concerns, but as firm as the customers were, the staff was even firmer with her words. She said, "Did you even pay deposit for your reservation? If you didn't then you're free to go." In the end the group of people just left their table and offered us their fish dish - which they asked the restaurant to cook for them.

The eatery's staff told us to wait 15 more minutes for the rice to cook, so we waited. However.... when another group of people arrived, the staff served them the rice instead of serving it to us and when we asked about it, the staff said they were still cooking rice. They served us 1 and 1/2 cups of rice (we ordered 7 cups as we were 7 in the group), which a few of us shared. One hour of waiting and we were getting the same response - they were still cooking rice.

On our part, we were there earlier than other people... they should've served us the rice first. The staff went to our table and saw some banana leaves (mom opened the suman we bought earlier that day just to ease the tummy ache) and the sarcastic staff said, "You have this... this is good as rice." She was pointing that we shouldn't complain about rice not being served because we had suman to eat anyway. I wanted to talk back to the staff, but because my mom, her boss and other colleague was there, I decided to keep the thoughts to myself.

We didn't pay for the fish dish as it was given to us... but we did pay for the other dishes as well as the first 1 1/2 cups of rice because we did eat them. I know business is booming that day because there were so many tourists, but it was just a bad service, and food wasn't good either. It reminded me never to travel anywhere during the Holy Week.

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So... what did you have last weekend? If you're new to the Weekend Eating meme, you can read the rules and get the badge codes HERE. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined last week.

Jenn, the Foodie

I come from a family who loves cooking and eating. I never had any formal training in cooking and that I taught myself how to cook based on the handed down recipes, but I could say that I can cook good food. In 2008, I started documenting my food trips for my travel blog, and since I have quite enough to start a food blog, might as well put all those food trips in one location. Thus, a food blog is born - thanks to the new Friendster Blogs. However, due to several problems, I was left with no choice but to pack bags again and move here instead. Here's the permanent address, promise! Enough talk, let the food trippin' begin! {Know More About Me}